


You Know How to Dance?

by youreyestheyglow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Dancing, First Kisses, Fluff, M/M, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:23:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1981068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco asks Jean to teach him how to dance, and Jean does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Know How to Dance?

“You know how to dance?” Marco asked.

I shrugged. “Yeah. It’s not that hard, honestly. Once you get the timing down, everything else is just a matter of practicing.”

“What kind of dancing do you do?” Marco sounds honestly interested.

I might be blushing a little. It’s not my fault. It’s just – dance isn’t something I talked about often. It was just a thing my mom made me do. It came easy to me as a child, so I just – kept up with it. It was never _important_ to me. “Ballet. Ballroom.”

“Ballet – that’s the one with the tutus, right?”

I laugh in his face. “Yeah, but – wow, there’s a _lot_ more to ballet than that. Not all dancers wear tutus, anyway.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t look bothered by my rudeness. God, I’m so happy I’m friends with this kid. “I wish I knew how to dance.”

Oh. “Um. I. Could teach you? If you want?” He looks at me hopefully, and I rush to clarify. “I mean. I wouldn’t be the best teacher, and I can’t teach you much of the advanced stuff, and it’s been a year or two since I last danced, but – I could teach you something, at least.”

“Really?”

I shrug. “Yeah, sure.”

“Ballroom too?”

I snort. “Well, ballroom isn’t a _thing_ , technically. It’s like – a genre. There are a billion different kinds of ballroom dancing. But –” I sigh. “They usually have the same basics, the same – poise, I guess – so I could teach you that.”

Seeing Marco smile is like staring into the damn sun.

I laugh. It’s so easy to make him happy.

 

We start later that day, after dinner. I start with ballet.

Ballet was hugely helpful when I started training with the 3DMG – I already knew where my center of gravity was, I knew how to balance, I knew how to use all my muscles, I knew where they all were. The whole three-dimensional part was a little difficult, and I wasn’t a big fan of having to trust things that weren’t part of my body, but when I started thinking of the gear as an extension of my body, my ballet training kicked in. Turns out, it works in reverse, too. Marco already knows where his center of gravity is, thanks to his training, and he’s – graceful, in a way. It’s – well – I guess the only way to put it is – beautiful. He’s beautiful.

Not that he doesn’t need work. I run around reminding him to use _all_ his muscles. His face when I slap his butt and tell him to squeeze it is _priceless_. “Gotta open up from your hips, Bodt!”

“Aren’t there hip muscles I can use?” He whines after the third time I’ve gleefully told him he’s not squeezing his butt. He blushes like his face is on fire every time I say it. That’s the only reason I say it so often, not because –

Yeah. Anyway.

“Nope, gotta squeeze your ass.”

“Jeannnnnnn,” he whines, but he does it anyway.

Not. That I was looking. Or anything like that. I mean. I was, but – I had to, to make sure he was squeezing. He’ll hurt his knees if he doesn’t, it’s important.

I don’t want Marco to get hurt.

 

It takes a bunch of sessions before Marco even pulls off a tondu to my satisfaction.

“Jean, it’s just a pointed toe, why –”

I gasp in horror. “Is _not_ ,” I counter. “It’s a _stretch_. It’s – you literally have to stretch your leg. You have to make your leg look three times longer than it was. It has to be perfectly straight, perfectly turned out. Your toe has to be pointed and turned out properly, and it has to look like it’s part of your leg, it has to look like there’s no ankle or heel it’s just a continuation of your limb stretching towards the floor and –”

And I’m rambling. Okay, maybe I liked dancing a little more than I said I did. It’s not _my_ fault, it’s just – a thing that happened, somewhere along the line. I have a thing for looking graceful and making difficult things look easy. Sue me.

I open my mouth again to say something that might make my rant sound a little less inane, but Marco just smiles at me. “Good thing you’re here to tell me, then,” he says. “It’s important to know.”

Something shifts in my chest when he says that.

I hope it wasn’t anything important.

 

Marco’s a good student, I think. I mean, I’ve never had any other students to compare him to, but if I did, he’d be the best. I think.

He’s enthusiastic. Graceful. Hard-working. Beautiful. He doesn’t mind the gaps in my knowledge or my inexperienced style of teaching. He doesn’t mind the fact that, by the end of our first month practicing, I seem unable to keep my hands off of him.

Not like – not like – _that_. Just. I have to correct him a lot. Dancing is hard and body positioning is hard and yeah, yeah, maybe I could’ve just told him what to do, but honestly, it’s easier to do something again if someone’s shown you how it’s supposed to feel.

 _Not like that_. Fuck, this all sounds weird.

Anyway, that’s about the time we switched into ballroom dancing, and I had to be his partner, which was definitely weird and not cool. No one wants to ballroom dance with their best friend. It’s all – bodies pressed up against each other, legs flicking around each other, faces close together, fast and sweaty and hot and –

Okay, so no, not all ballroom dancing is like that.

Okay, fine, there are ballroom dances and styles that are way less intimate, and there are plenty of styles with a set amount of space between partners, and our faces _definitely_ weren’t supposed to be that close together and ballet is so hard that I could’ve taught him for years and not been done.

And here’s something you have to consider.

I don’t fucking care.

Also, we might not _have_ years.

I mean, what if we don’t make it into the top ten? What if we do and something happens to us anyway? To one of us. One of us. It’s definitely possible that we could get separated and something could happen to only one of us.

And anyway, if I waited until I was done teaching him ballet, we’d never get to ballroom.

Oh. And also. What I was teaching him was what I remembered the most. Can’t teach him something I don’t know.

And in any case, he didn’t complain and didn’t seem to mind so. Whatever.

 

Maybe we were moving a little fast, though. I’d already started dipping him.

Not that that was necessarily _fast_ , I mean. Just that. There were probably other things we could’ve been doing.

But we weren’t.

He’d honestly taken to ballroom really well. He handled the dips and the turns and the tiny quick movements easily, and once I got him to sink down into his feet instead of staying on his toes all the time, he did great.

The combination we were practicing involved a pose in which I basically dropped to one knee and lunged forward, Marco dropping to one knee under my crotch with his other leg thrown over my leg – not the one that was lunging, the one that was on the ground. Confusing, I know. Explaining it to Marco without using the word “crotch” was nearly impossible, and went something like this: “So I – uh – kinda – lunge forward like this right, but my right knee comes down to the floor so it’s kind of a fake lunge but you get my drift anyway you have to be on one knee too, like – ok but – no your knee can’t be there, it has to be under my – under – between my – um – it has to be – I –” That was when his eyes had brightened with understanding, and he’d knelt so his knee was under my crotch. But. Two problems. First of all: his left leg. He didn’t know where to put it. Second of all, it wasn’t really his _knee_ that was supposed to be under my crotch, it was his thigh, and I somehow had to tell him to put his thigh up against my – uh – _region_ without making it sound weird.

I huff. It wasn’t half this awkward when I did it with a girl, why is it so weird now? I just have to say it. It’s Marco. He won’t think anything of it.

It’s Marco.

“Right, so. Uh. Well, we should – or – you should get your left leg in position first, and – well – sorry in advance. It’s kinda hard to balance. But I won’t let you fall, I promise.”

He smiles at me. “I trust you.”

I nod, some of my confidence returning. He trusts me.

“Ok. Well. Your left leg goes over my right leg like –” I reach down and tug his leg over mine, trying to ignore how much that feels like a prelude to _the thing_ , you know, the – _thing_ , with _places_ and – I – it feels like we’re about to have sex. I’m trying to ignore how much it feels like we’re about to have sex, is what I’m trying to say.

“It goes here,” I mutter as I pull him forward until his knee is over my thigh. This has the added effect of dragging him forward until his thigh is _right there_ and it’s a problem because _it just fucking is okay_ and also because I might have a bit of a _minor problem_ down there (except that it’s pretty major and I’m not trying to sound boastful here because right now I wish it was fucking minor but it’s not it’s a _major_ problem and it’s making itself known) and it’s only by the grace of my shaking and tired muscles that my _problem_ isn’t actually resting on his damn thigh right now.

I look away from his leg and _oh_ his face is right there.

Right there.

Like, my nose brushes against his when I turn my head.

My hand on his lower back twitches and I guess my face does something interesting because he giggles a little, or maybe it was because our noses touched because he scrunches up his nose a little and it’s _cute_ but not cute like _aw what a nice baby you have_ it’s cute like _shit I want to kiss you_ and he’s flushed from dancing for an hour and his hair is a little messed up and his tiny smile is adorable and right there and his hand in mine is warm and _is he arching up against me a little or is that just me_ and _I’m sorry Marco I don’t know what I’m doing_ but something in my chest shifts _really fucking far_ and I know I’m a little oblivious sometimes but I’m not anymore.

That’s not fucking heartburn. Not in the literal sense, anyway.

It’s –

It’s –

I don’t fucking know what I’m doing.

I’ve never even held hands with someone, let alone kissed someone.

I didn’t mean for my first kiss to happen because I sprung it on my best friend.

But that’s what happens.

I don’t have to lean forward very far. Like. Maybe an inch. If even. It’s a sloppy kiss, mostly because his lips are parted a little and mine fucking aren’t, but it only lasts about half a damn second anyway so it doesn’t matter.

“Marco – I – uh – I’m –”

He laughs again, but this one isn’t just a giggle. It’s a laugh, loud and happy and _bubbly_ , and it’s adorable, and he’s laughing at me because _I am an asshole, I am the biggest asshole in existence and he is going to throw me in the trash._

“You could’ve asked, you know,” he teases. “To be polite.”

“I – shit – I’m sorry, Marco, I –” I’m trying to stand up, but I can’t without his help or we’ll both fall over – why did I _do that_ what the _fuck Kirschtein –_

“Jean,” he says, and his tone makes me pause. “Why are you apologizing?”

I have no idea how to interpret his tone _what is going on_ “I, um,” I try weakly to pull my hand out of his and he actually _lets it go oh no that’s not a good sign_ , “I – should’ve asked. I shouldn’t have put you in such an awkward position you can’t even get away or slap me if you want I –”

“But you’re not apologizing for wanting to kiss me.”

Oh. Oh fuck. Ohhhhhh no. Shit. Shit. “I. Um. No. I’m sorry. I’m – sorry that I’m not sorry? I – shit, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I –”

“Jean?” Marco interrupts. “Would it help if I said I’ve wanted to kiss you for months?”

“No I’m sorry I – wait.” Wait. Hold up. Hold on. Everything stop. My whole brain is coming to a halt. The whole entire thing. Wait. Wait. “Did you just say –”

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for months, Jean,” Marco says patiently, and when I flap my mouth at him and babble out noises that even I don’t fucking understand he just laughs again and kisses my nose. “Breathe, Jean. Breathe.”

_I can’t he kissed my nose._

“Jean?” _Oh he sounds worried._

“I – I –”

“Are – are you all right?”

That actually makes me laugh, and Marco laughs too, probably relieved.

“I – yeah. Yeah. I am. I think.”

Several awkward seconds later, we lean in for another kiss, bang noses, and lurch away from each other. Our legs tangle and I’m _on top of him what am I doing here_?

Marco just laughs, though, and I let my head drop to his shoulder (mostly to hide my blush) and I laugh too.

He wraps his arms around my waist. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nod. “Yeah. Yeah.”

I scramble off of him – probably should’ve done that when I fell in the first place, but – I offer him my hand and pull him up.

He doesn’t let go.

He kisses me again, and it’s much less messy. Also a lot less painful. It’s nice. I’m kissing Marco and my heart is growing like a balloon and he doesn’t step back, just straightens to his full height and places his free hand on my shoulder.

“Can we try that combination again?”

I laugh. Mostly out of happiness, but for the sake of my reputation (nonexistent at this point I’m sure) I’ll say it was because he looked funny, with his hair all messed up like that. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s try it again.”


End file.
